Rapper Kendrick Lamar immediately volunteered his services to oversee the soundtrack for Marvel blockbuster Black Panther after he was granted a special preview by director Ryan Coogler.

The Creed filmmaker reveals he had been planning to work with Kendrick for some time, and when he initially approached the Grammy winner last spring (Apr17) about contributing to the Black Panther project, Coogler only envisioned the hip-hop star offering up a few tunes.

However, allowing the musician to view early cuts of the movie was enough to convince Kendrick to be more heavily involved, taking on the role of producer and co-curator, as his excitement for the superhero movie grew.

“At first, he was just going to do a few songs for the film,” Ryan explained to NPR.org. “Then he came in and watched quite a bit of the movie, and the next thing I know, they were booking a studio and they were going at it.”

Together with his Top Dawg Entertainment label boss, Anthony ‘Top Dawg’ Tiffith, and producer Soundwave, Kendrick recruited artists including The Weeknd, Khalid, SZA, Future, Schoolboy Q,2 Chainz, and James Blake to work on the soundtrack while he was on tour, and the finished product was perfect for Coogler’s movie, which already had an instrumental score by composer Ludwig Goransson.

“Hats off to him (Kendrick) and his production team – they made some really great songs that we got placed in there,” Ryan shared. “And hats off to Soundwave, who’s producing, and Ludwig, who was able to manipulate the score to incorporate some of those songs and weave them in and out of the orchestral stuff that he was already doing. I can’t wait for people to hear the music on that album, man.”

Fans will get to enjoy the Black Panther soundtrack when it drops on Friday (09Feb18), ahead of the movie’s release next week (begs12Feb18), starring Chadwick Boseman as the titular superhero.